Baseball catchers or umpires typically wear chest protectors to prevent injury resulting from being struck by a baseball in the chest or shoulder region. Early chest protectors were generally made of cloth sewn in horizontal ribs to allow up and down flexibility, with vertical seams to provide front to back flexibility. These chest protectors typically included a vertical seam at the center of the protector which reduced the shock absorbing properties of the protector in the center of the chest where the shock absorbency was most needed. Glahe U.S. Pat. No. 3,076,197 resolved this problem by displacing the vertical seams to the sides away from the center of the protector. Further improvements moved the seams around so as to provide better flexibility and protection to the wearer as shown in Glahe U.S. Pat. No. 3,125,762.
A further attempt at providing additional protection involved the addition of rigid plates within the body of the chest protector as illustrated in Tomczak U. S. Pat. No. 4,525,875. However, one problem with protectors that are fairly rigid is that a ball which strikes the protector in a rigid area will bounce in an unpredictable direction, thereby reducing the likelihood that a catcher will be able to catch the ball.
These chest protectors also had a major drawback since they did not allow air circulation between the body of the wearer and the protector thereby causing an insulating effect. It was typical for a catcher to lose weight during a baseball game from perspiring excessively. Later devices added air holes to the chest protectors for breathing, for example, Buhler, U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,847, Gourdreau et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,373,211, and Landi et al, U. S. Pat. No. 4,422,183, all included breathing holes.
Later chest protector devices have been constructed from foam materials for providing lighter weight shields. For example, the Buhler device uses an open cell foam which is coated on an inner layer with a water impervious coating to prevent the protector from absorbing the user's perspiration.
A common problem with chest protectors has been their lack of flexibility. For example, when a catcher kneels or bows his back to create a concave area for corralling the ball, a chest protector will typically bow outwardly rather than molding to the catcher's body thereby defeating or hindering the catcher's efforts at creating an area to confine the ball. Also, to provide freedom of movement, for example in the area of a catcher's throwing arm, protectors leave an area of the catcher's body uncovered. While allowing greater movement, uncovering a portion of a wearer's body subjects that portion to greater risk of injury.